Outdoor barbecue cookery continues to grow in popularity despite certain difficulties and inconveniences. These drawbacks have principally to do with setting up, fueling, and cleaning the barbecue unit, as well as any subsequent disposal of waste from the barbecuing process.
Heretofore, there has been considerable effort to developing alternatives to the more standard, substantially fixed, metal barbecue unit. This effort continues because the need for an easy to use, inexpensive, portable, safe, and environmentally responsible unit has not been met. The prior art is replete with examples of substantially metal devices which are cumbersome in setup, use, and cleanup, provide an undesirable cooking surface, and are disposable only because they can be hauled to the garbage bin. Furthermore, there has been little attempt at grappling with the problems of the environmental impact of the disposal of these devices.
Whereas, in contrast, the present invention offers the following attributes and advantages over the prior art:
1. a paper package, completely self-contained, converts from a convenient, smaller package for storage and carrying to a firebox containing specially shaped charcoal and starter;
2. the folded out firebox supports an attractive, aluminum or ceramic coated fiber-based grill which is easy to clean because there are no cross bars in the grate design.
3. the firebox is disposable by its nature and design which means, for example, that it is lightweight and substantially water degradable;
4. the package is usable where portability, infrequent use or cleanup makes other grilling methods less attractive, for example:
at a beach or public park picnic ground, PA1 on an apartment balcony or PA1 for quick lunchtime or snack cookery;
5. the firebox is fireproof, self-supporting and will not burn the surface underneath;
6. the package and firebox are non-toxic and produce no smelly fumes to affect the delicious smell of the cooking food and its final taste;
7. the package is inexpensive to manufacture using existing, under utilized plant in the charcoal briquetting and paper pulp molding industries; and
8. by dint of the aforementioned attributes, the user will perceive much better value than would be expected from an inexpensive, disposable product.